Hi Susan Thanks so much for your advice! The house we are building is on the Gold Coast, Queensland Australia. We are fairly close to a final decision and have our colour selection appointment today (I hope you see this before we go - would love your feedback again) and it's very much in line with your suggestions, which is a relief! We are going with Boral double height stonewash brick with off-white mortar, dune newport cladding and we were going to go with Wallaby roof, gutter, garage door & dune fascia. We had chosen Wallaby (although Basalt was a contender) for the roof and gutters as we'd seen comments that Basalt threw blue tones. Wallaby seemed more of an earthy grey to tie in the stonewash bricks with the dune cladding. We were thinking of dune for the fascia as our skillion roof is reversed, so skillion is angled down at the front of the house, so we thought the dune fascia would separate the roof from the house, so the roof didn't look so overbearing (what do you think?). I've included an image of the elevations so you know what I mean. Also see image of brick with dune, wallaby & basalt swatches. Gutters will be dune, garage door wallaby (to tie in with roof) and window frames we have a choice of the following: Black, White, Precious Silver, Champagne, Surfmist, Monument, Woodland Grey. I'm leaning towards woodland grey to tie in with the Wallaby roof - although have considered Surfmist and Monument. Fingers crossed that you see this before we finalise everything, but if not, I'm feeling a lot better that I'm not too far off a colour scheme that would work well. Thanks again Susan! Nissrine

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It seems like there are two issues- firstly do you take the belt and braces approach of stripping your side roof and making it like new or do you just deal with the immediate issue- I say ask roofer number 3. Separately you need to remove the cause of the problem which is technically a communal issue. I say look at your lease agreement and if time is of the essence you cover yourself with lots of pictures- get the work done at your expense and then pursue your upstairs neighbours for a contribution afterwards.

Thanks. That makes sense, and if budget was limitless then I’d certainly like to do that. Some of the items are more urgent than others though - the gutters for example are in bad shape on one side of the property (the fall is wrong, can’t easily be fixed and is too old to source replacement parts for), replacing these now would be a lot cheaper than doing the roof replacement, but there’s a risk of them needing to be removed and potentially replaced again if I get the roof replaced? Similarly I think there’s a mix of reactive works, such as the above, along with the design elements. The patio design for example would tie into the garden design, but the patio itself will have drainage requirements that then tie into the more reactive drainage issues. I’m assuming a builder would be good for the mechanics of what needs doing, but not so much in coming up with the vision / design?